================================

Volume 5

Chapter 17: Northern Demons

================================

“Ah, wait, I’m not in position yet!”

“Give me a minute!”

Thorn’s and Volt’s voice rang like cold water. By the time he had been in his location, Siva was confident that the two would have been ready when he gave the signal. Now though, he was disappointed.

“If you’re moving then double it!” he cried miserably.

He looked back and saw the two Lapis Lazuli leading the pack of over a hundred B to S-ranked monsters.

On his left were fifty or so more, with the same also coming in from the right side.

With how far he went running around the forest, by now, it would seem that a very large number of B to S-ranked monsters inhabiting this part of the forest were already hot on his trail.

“I can’t fight them!”

With just one look he knew that these monsters are more vicious than the ones he’d seen and fought before. He knew that his real strength is still not in par with even A-Ranked Monster Hunters.

“I can’t use any magic and my Dragunov’s stun effect is too weak even against A-Class monsters.”

Siva clicked his tongue and looked over the direction of the ships that deployed their alien hunters.

“They’re coming from the East.” Just as the words left his mouth, he felt like looking at his left side as there he saw a humanoid figure from the shadows.

He felt puzzled. The distance between that figure and him was still a good 50m or so afar, with the trees and the bushes and the shadows of the forest still covering his own tracks.

And yet he felt its presence.

He could feel its desire to kill, stronger than anything he’s ever felt before. Stronger than the time when he was just starting the game and gathering monster resources back in Aarun; stronger than the sense of danger he felt when he was fighting two Lapis Lazuli in the Pacific Ocean aboard the Minerva on his way to Espada; stronger than the suffocating pressure of the Forest Dragon back in Hagonoy… but more than anything else, this kind of aggressive murderous desire was the kind that was written on its bones… the kind that was innate, a genetic desire to murder anything that was different from its species!

Siva felt his heart clench. If he could compare this kind of feeling to anything that he had felt before, then the only existence he could think of was that entity, the one that showed up one night in the Magic City of Loire. The first time he met that entity, the existence he thought was the other side of himself that was slowly waking up because of the exposure in this game, was the first time he felt this kind of familiar suffocating pressure.

With blazing red eyes looking straight at him, he saw the humanoid figure raise three arms. Two on the right and a single one on the left, it seem to point its left arm at him as its eyes curved into what Siva had presumed to be a look of delight.

Kill. Peirce. Burn. Crush. Annihilate. Butcher. Choke. Behead. Chop. Mutilate. Pluck. Remove. Dislocate. Drown. Fry. Murder. Obliterate. Kill. Peirce. Burn. Crush. Annihilate. Butcher. Choke. Behead. Chop. Mutilate. Pluck. Remove. Dislocate. Drown. Fry. Murder. Obliterate. Kill. Peirce. Burn. Crush. Annihilate. Butcher. Choke. Behead. Chop. Mutilate. Pluck. Remove. Dislocate. Drown. Fry. Murder. Obliterate. Kill. Peirce. Burn. Crush. Annihilate. Butcher. Choke. Behead. Chop. Mutilate. Pluck. Remove. Dislocate. Drown. Fry. Murder. Obliterate. Kill. Peirce. Burn. Crush. Annihilate. Butcher. Choke. Behead. Chop. Mutilate. Pluck. Remove. Dislocate. Drown. Fry. Murder. Obliterate. Kill. Peirce. Burn. Crush. Annihilate. Butcher. Choke. Behead. Chop. Mutilate. Pluck. Remove. Dislocate. Drown. Fry. Murder. Obliterate. Kill. Peirce. Burn. Crush. Annihilate. Butcher. Choke. Behead. Chop. Mutilate. Pluck. Remove. Dislocate. Drown. Fry. Murder. Obliterate. Kill. Peirce. Burn. Crush. Annihilate. Butcher. Choke. Behead. Chop. Mutilate. Pluck. Remove. Dislocate. Drown. Fry. Murder. Obliterate. Kill. Peirce. Burn. Crush. Annihilate. Butcher. Choke. Behead. Chop. Mutilate. Pluck. Remove. Dislocate. Drown. Fry. Murder. Obliterate. Kill. Peirce. Burn. Crush. Annihilate. Butcher. Choke. Behead. Chop. Mutilate. Pluck. Remove. Dislocate. Drown. Fry. Murder. Obliterate. Kill. Peirce. Burn. Crush. Annihilate. Butcher. Choke. Behead. Chop. Mutilate. Pluck. Remove. Dislocate. Drown. Fry. Murder. Obliterate. Kill. Peirce. Burn. Crush. Annihilate. Butcher. Choke. Behead. Chop. Mutilate. Pluck. Remove. Dislocate. Drown. Fry. Murder. Obliterate. Kill. Peirce. Burn. Crush. Annihilate. Butcher. Choke. Behead. Chop. Mutilate. Pluck. Remove. Dislocate. Drown. Fry. Murder. Obliterate. Kill. Peirce. Burn. Crush. Annihilate. Butcher. Choke. Behead. Chop. Mutilate. Pluck. Remove. Dislocate. Drown. Fry. Murder. Obliterate. Kill. Peirce. Burn. Crush. Annihilate. Butcher. Choke. Behead. Chop. Mutilate. Pluck. Remove. Dislocate. Drown. Fry. Murder. Obliterate. Kill. Peirce. Burn. Crush. Annihilate. Butcher. Choke. Behead. Chop. Mutilate. Pluck. Remove. Dislocate. Drown. Fry. Murder. Obliterate. Kill. Peirce. Burn. Crush. Annihilate. Butcher. Choke. Behead. Chop. Mutilate. Pluck. Remove. Dislocate. Drown. Fry. Murder. Obliterate. Kill. Peirce. Burn. Crush. Annihilate. Butcher. Choke. Behead. Chop. Mutilate. Pluck. Remove. Dislocate. Drown. Fry. Murder. Obliterate.

Eat.

His mind began to be filled with the message those pair of bright red eyes wanted to send.

The figure’s entire will to murder was consisted of so many ways. It was being transmitted to him in full blast like a storm. It was just for that one single moment but it felt like he had seen an entire world of bloody carnage and massacre in that one instant.

Siva can’t even help but recall the stories he had heard and read from the forums about Terroa.

Players often talk about how terrifying monsters are but those who had fought a Demon before and were still able to survive to retell their encounter all said the same thing: Demons are a hundred times more frightening than the scariest monster you can imagine.

How?

Why?

What makes Demons that frightening?

Monsters have frightening appearances and their very ferocious violent nature is the source of this fear.

It breeds the [fear of crushing defeat].

But Demons, even though they are of the same size as that of Terran, if compared against monsters, they are still a bit far off from being intimidating. And yet, the [fear of being mutilated alive] takes root on the very hearts of men. Because Demons have the same form as that of Terrans, and it was part of the human behavior to imagine an experience worse than death, then that fear of being mutilated alive multiplies by a hundred or thousand fold. Adding the fact that Demons are capable of facial expressions as well, with the boost of RPG: Terroa’s 90% close-to-being-real graphics rendering, then the experience of this horror is as real as it can get.

Also, Demons… are as aggressive as monsters. So just imagining the horrors, deep inside Siva –no, to Rex– he could feel that the root this sense of fear is creating is what makes these creatures frightening.

Its nature was something else. Not just fear but… a kind of a threat. It was the kind that felt like it was very specific only for him.

Like a hatred that seeped through the bones.

As its arms seem to move so slow, its eyes locked into Siva’s.

Finally, at what seemed to be its fingers pointing at him, Siva felt his heart clench like being gripped as a sense of danger repeatedly screamed in his mind.

That voice in his head was named instinct. It told him to move, to run, to dodge, to get away from that dark figure. But his heart was stopped, his vision dark, his mind blank, and his body trembling. He’s like a twig about to fall from the murderous desire transmitted from fifty meters away. Like a candle burned by a torch, like an ice cube skin to skin with flowing lava, he could feel his knees almost giving in but was still miraculously standing up.

“Why? How? What was it?”

His mind worked for an answer to that question. The seconds stretched into minutes, everything was so slow around him. The details of the world were forming in his mind like a sphere of details. Every single tiny detail, movement, and existence was like a large movie of information being played in his mind.

He could feel the wind flowing beneath his skin like a hand caressing him. He can hear the sound of a bee’s beating wings. And he could also see the spit of a fly between him and the humanoid figure fly off as it saw a bewitching sap in a bush near a tree.

The scratching sound of a caterpillar transferring from one leaf to another on the tree on his right…

A drop of dew from his left that came to fall because of the rumbling of the ground…

The croak of a frog…

The wind passing by a bore on a tree trunk far away…

The sensation of the ants chipping with each other…

The exhaling sound of the animals hiding in fear in a burrow not too far away…

And even his own heartbeat, for some weird reason or another, was echoing like a drum set in his mind.

One might even ask, inside the game, was it even possible for one to hear your own heartbeat or anyone’s heartbeat at that?

Every sensation was amplified and he was processing them at a speed beyond normal human limits.

His mind was working in a sense both new and alienly familiar.

But what terrified him most of all was that as soon as he entered this state, he immediately started to calm down. The fear in his heart dissipated, the trembling of his body stopped, the numbing of his nerves vanished, and his breathing that had stopped suddenly returned with a deep inhale.

The sound of him inhaling air echoed like a giant gasping for air, covering all other sounds in the entirety of the forest. The monsters’ roaring stopped and even the leaves and the wind also ceased as he stole a breath’s time from them.

It was like that silence right after a baby was born and its very first breath of life after coming into the world of light had stolen everyone else’s breaths at that one exact moment.

But as soon as it ended, the silence was broken by a surge of a looming presence. It was a second layer of ‘self’ that flashed like an after shadow above Siva’s shoulders. Like a second image of him, only a tiny bit bigger and more dominant in presence.

As soon as he saw this, the figure not too far away widened its red eyes as if in surprise. But after just a second, it recovered and their eyes met.

This time, Siva’s voice echoed in the Auricle instead of freezing in fear and panic. He disregarded his initial fright and just gave a warning on the two.

“Change of plans!” Siva yelled with haste. “I’ve been discov–BOOM!” Siva doesn’t even have time to finish when the figure made a rush towards his direction with great speed.

It was like a man-sized spider that grappled and hooked its long three limbs on trees, rocks, and bushes to get to him in just under ten breaths. And like a monkey with three arms longer than its legs, it was fearsome to see something that monstrously ugly rushing towards you with pure and unhindered murderous intention.

On one of its hand, it had a gun-looking pistol-like weapon, on the second was a shield, while the third was used to help maneuver itself within the forest terrain.

Everything about the creature was dark in color.

Much like how Siva’s cursed state is only it’s not made of smoke but its skin was actually dark blue.

Under the shade of the forest, it was black-like in color, a bluish tinge could only be seen when it was hit by light. The creature’s expression was vividly clear to Siva as soon as it got close.

A ray of light went passed his head and burned down an entire mature tree’s trunk in one shot behind him.

This sight horrified Siva as he looked at the charred remains of the trunk as the tree fell down with a crashing sound.

“Plasma burst!”

Surprise ran through his body. He looked over the looming shadow and raised a hand to protect himself but was met with a monstrous grip that grabbed his arm, aiming to rip it off.

When the monster couldn’t pull his arm away from his body, he instead raised him up and smashed Siva into the tree behind him.

Blood and gore was a graphics option in Terroa and players can choose between detailed graphics rendering or a game-like multi-polygonal settings where no blood and gore will appear and bodily damages appear like bright [cut] details in the avatar.

But Rex’s NLD had been retrofitted by Augustus in a specific manner that everything around him felt and looked to be real.

From the beginning, Rex’s settings have always been this way and thus, from sensation to emotions, everything around him affected him like it would be in the real world.

Being thrashed into a tree like a dead lug was as painful as it was in the real world. Siva had no pain cancellers activated from the start of his career.

He could feel a hot liquid rose from his stomach and flooded his mouth but the demon wasn’t done yet and as he fell down, a punch was landed on his body that completely shattered the tree.

He was blasted through the tree and rolled on the forest floor towards the nearest Lapis who, just then, leaped into a frenzied launch with open mouth and dancing tongue.

Its mouth was watering full of saliva and eyes were unfocused and only relied on its pure instincts to sense where its food was.

When its shadow loomed over him, Siva was very surprised and in the last moments before it crashed on him, he equipped his flight armor and made a desperate dash.

He was like a rocket that activated its thrusters in the wrong angle and thus he rolled over in the forest floor just so he could dodge the Lapis’ attack at the last moment.

The Demons looked over him but the Lapis that had managed to landed did not want anything to take away its prey from it so it used its long green tail t smash at the Demon who was so focused in Siva that it didn’t even have time to dodge.

He was crushed like garlic under a knife. Black blood splattered and the remains of its body were scattered like paste.

Siva staggered to stand up but fell back towards a tree. The Lapis roared, using its [Pose of the King] stance that reverberated in all directions. Siva had now canceled his ability but the S-Ranked monsters around him were already on his trail so it made no difference as the Lapis roared with the same pose once again.

“Demons are strong…” Siva cursed inwardly and drank a bottle of red potion to recover his injuries.

Two consecutive poses, Siva used this chance to escape from the Lapis but not even two seconds had passed, the second Lapis who towed the rest of the horde arrived from forty meters away in front of him.

Siva clicked his tongue. “This is dangerous…”

Form the front and back were monsters, but just as he turned to his left, he saw countless dark shadows with differing shapes. He felt horrified by the unified will of murder coming from those demons and he knew that if he doesn’t move now, he will be surrounded by them.

Left with no choice, he chose to run on his right side, towards the western horizon.

Pressing on his ear, he yelled, “I’m cornered, how are the bombs?”

Two voices replied as he spoke.

Volt: “I’m positioning for the last one.”

Thorn: “Planting the last… alright. There.”

“Okay. After that, wait for my signal then we will proceed with the plan.”

Right after he spoke, he poured all of his attention to escaping the current situation. Siva knew that he wasn’t a match with these demons and he also knew that fighting these oversized Lapis Lazulis that grew up in the north, with the addition of the monster horde behind them, will only lead him towards his demise.

Looking right behind him, Siva can’t help thinking that he might really have dipped into this reckless plan a little too sooner.

But then, thinking about how strong Hagrid was and considering the strength that he lacked when he fought against him and heard Volt’s and Thorn’s accounts of what had happened… if he stay as weak as he was, then he would never be able to protect his brother.

Not here…

Not in the real world…

If he can’t at least have the sense of security by having the kind of strength that can protect his brother, then all of these things he’s been doing until now were all just a mere game.

He clenched his fist and gritted his teeth. He was able to at least accept this fact, although it’s very painful to do so.

Weak… he is very weak. Right now, aside from him rushing forth towards the direction of Alexandria, what he needed the most was the strength that can give him the confidence of being able to stand in front of anything and never back down.

And with this reckless plan, along with the help of the monsters he had gathered…

“I’m going to get that ball!”